Blessing ...

Trevor's spent a bunch of time this past few months talking about Genesis 12:2.

"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing."

Basically, God says, "Hey Abraham! I've got some really cool news for you! I'm going to bless you, and because of my blessing of you, you're going to get to bless other people!"

Genesis 1 - 11: The credits are rolling - there's the world, and there's people, and there's sin, and here's the account of this person and this person, and now, this is the account of Abraham.

Act 1, Scene 1, the very first statement to set the scene for the entire rest of the story, is God's covenant with Abraham. The whole rest of the book is about how this obscure Babylonian becomes the father of blessing - first to his family, then to his people, and eventually, through Christ, to the entire world.

Abraham doesn't get to live all of this out. He doesn't get to see the complete fulfillment, but God intends to make good on His promise. Therefore the role of Abraham's descendants is to be both the recipients and the conduits of God's blessing. And as Christians who have been grafted into the vine - merged into the stem so that we may partake of this blessing ourselves - we take on the role of conduits of God's blessing to others also.